Paper Cat
by hangthesilver
Summary: Sometimes Roxas thought that his cat was trying to tell him something. Next life, gen.


**Title:** Paper Cat  
**Rating**: PG (for swearing)  
**Genre:** Next life? And maybe some gen, with a hint of slight romance.  
**Word Count:** 2, 889  
**Summary:** Sometimes Roxas thought that his cat was trying to tell him something.

Author's Notes: So today I laid down on the kitchen floor with my anti-social cat and he looked deep into my eyes. Somehow this turned into something kinda weird.

The title is from the song "Paper Kitten Nightmare" by the band Margot and the Nuclear So and So's. Listen to them. Honestly. I mean, the guy meows in the song. That's only the beginning! There's a download link to the song on my LJ posting of this, which you can get to my going to my profile here. ^^ Enjoy.

* * *

Sometimes Roxas thought that his cat was trying to tell him something.

There was that time he'd come home, and there had been scratches in his couch that were curved and looked suspiciously like some sort of writing—Egyptian, or maybe Japanese, but Roxas didn't get it. Then there was the time he'd come home and the computer keyboard had been knocked down, and he hadn't been able to find the wireless mouse for days. Which might prove less than suspicious, but then it had happened three more times in quick succession, until he'd resolutely resorted to hiding the mouse in his car when he left the house.

He'd step into the apartment and he'd find the knives out of the wooden block, crossed together, and then he'd found the red crayons and sharpies in the house pooled together in one big cluster. One day he'd found the TV turned on when he'd sworn he'd turned it off and it was turned to channel eight. Normally he wouldn't care about the channel—he'd be more fucking freaked out about the whole "the TV is magical!"—but it was the Praise Jesus channel and like _hell_ if he ever watched the Praise Jesus channel.

And sometimes the cat would stare at him, for hours on end, with those big soulful green eyes, and Roxas would have to uncomfortably turn away or lock him outside his room. Even then the thing never cried or made noise, but Roxas would wake up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom and he'd be curled up against the door, or the wall right next to the door. And Roxas would, with a sigh, let him in, even though he was quite sure one of these days it would suffocate him, like the stories his mother had told him when he'd been little, about how her cat had used to sleep on her face and would nearly suffocate her at times. Nonetheless, he looked so lonely that Roxas let him in the bed, and he woke up every day, still breathing, with the cat curled up warm and soft against his stomach.

It was a nice constant, most days.

__

Without a doubt it had been Demyx's idea. He'd grown up with entirely repressive parents, he said, a true Spartan upbringing, he wondered why he'd never been left out on the rocks to die, and Roxas would wonder aloud with him before getting punched in the arm. But Demyx had never had a pet and he wanted a cat because he was probably a cat person anyway. Roxas agreed. Dogs would probably bite him.

They'd fought over it, though, because Roxas didn't want to live with an animal. Demyx was bad enough and he didn't quite trust him to feed it and pet it and play with it and it would probably be annoying, or standoffish, and Roxas was enough of those for one home But Demyx had begged and begged and Roxas was, without a doubt, a cat person too, and the forlorn puppy look in Demyx's eyes had been enough.

They'd gone to the pound and Demyx had wanted a kitten, a tiny baby kitten, and they'd found one, small and wobbly and falling all over itself. It had spiky fur and was an unusually dark shade of orange, so deep it was nearly red, and so they'd taken it and brought it home. It was a clumsy thing, fell off the couch more than it should have, didn't hesitate to scratch either of them, and didn't like using the litter box for a good three months before Roxas had beat it enough with his floppy slipper that it realized what the litter box was for.

It wasn't until Demyx grew bored of it that Roxas started to really like it. It was sort of spunky. Annoyingly cute. And even kind of friendly.

Demyx got a dog the next week. The cat was a little over a year old by that time, and the puppy Demyx got was a clumsy little Rottweiler pup, also falling all over himself. Demyx insisted it be an inside dog; Roxas had to beat it with his boot for three weeks before it realized that the carpet inside was not something to eat. The cat ignored it and when the puppy got too close, it would whimper away with a bloody nose. Roxas personally felt the cat was quite justified.

When Roxas was a junior and the cat was nearly two years old, Demyx moved out of their apartment and in with his boyfriend, taking the puppy with him. Roxas had regarded the cat seriously, the cat had regarded him seriously back, and then Roxas grudgingly found a one bedroom that allowed animals. Sometimes he felt like the cat was watching his every move.

__

Her name was Naminé and Roxas kind of, sort of, weirdly liked her. Sometimes he even though he loved her, but that was way too soon. She was funny, in a quiet way, and she drew stuff that made his heart break and melt. He'd met her at one of Sora's parties, the lame kind that ended with the same people at the pong table, the slowly dwindling crowd, and Sora and Riku making out in front of everyone. It was classically lame, but it was comfortable and smelled like peach flavored smoke, mainly, and he thought Naminé was like that, comfortable and peachy and smoky, when she wanted to be.

He took her to see some cheesy horror film at the independent movie theatre, and then she took him to see a mural on the side of a wall in some dark alleyway that made him fear for his life. They got frozen yogurt after that, decided it was a success, and Roxas didn't invite her to his apartment for another few weeks, until he thoroughly decided that he loved her. Sora had congratulated him. Made sure that Roxas knew any and all babies that came from this were going to owe him a piece of their souls, respectively.

They went to his apartment and he showed her his keyboard, the sheet music he was trying to learn, the inside of his bedroom, and then the bed, and the wall, and the shower, too. It all happened naturally, there was nothing awkward about it (only the adorably awkward that Roxas had to admit he found her), and he thought he could marry this girl, if only for that short, shy smile.

The next morning he found the cat sitting on the bar in the kitchen, the place that it wasn't supposed to be, watching him start coffee. Roxas shooed it down, making a face, and then turned around, sweetening the grounds with cinnamon and thinking about how sweet Naminé was, and how there were things in his life that sometimes just made sense.

He turned around and the cat was back on the bar, watching him with intense green eyes, almost accusing, and Roxas glared back, and then he laughed, and reached out and stroked its ears. The cat submitted to the gesture for a second, and then moved away, as though offended, as though it could feel, fragile little paper feelings like a person.

Roxas just smiled. Today was perfect for smiling.

__

Sora tried too hard sometimes, and the fruity girly drink that he tried to get Roxas to down went to waste, because Roxas slopped it on the floor by "accident." Sora pouted, made a face, and got someone to clean it up while Roxas stalked to the bar and tried to glare at anything in his way. The world deserved to be on fire. Nobody deserved to really be alive, right now.

Demyx seemed to know exactly what he needed, which was lucky, because Roxas was about to kill someone. Johnny Walker, his old friend gliding on the rocks, joined them both as they loitered about the pool table, watching Demyx's boyfriend and his other friend threaten to kill each other as the balls bounced around the table in a very unprofessional way. Bets were made, bets were lost, and somewhere in the next few minutes (or hours), Roxas found himself with the pool stick in his hand, and apparently he and Demyx were on a team. Demyx was enthusiastic; Roxas didn't know what was going on, but they lost, apparently, because Roxas got angry, at some point, and broke the cue stick against the wall.

There was a lot of shouting, Sora apologized a lot, and then he and Demyx dragged him back to his apartment. He asked for another drink; Sora said no, but once they got inside and he'd gone to find Roxas new clothes that weren't sweat stained and alcohol covered, Demyx covertly poured him an amaretto sour, that he disguised in a water bottle. Roxas wondered why they had stopped being roommates, because Demyx was very clearly _ace_ and then he remembered that Demyx was in love.

Love could suck it.

Sora got him into bed eventually, after he had sort of cried in the bathroom in a very embarrassed manner that ended with threats about certain things being castrated if anyone ever found out, and turned the light off, leaving the door open a crack. Roxas was a little indignant, because he wasn't a baby, but once the light was off he found it suddenly hard to move anything. Not his arm. Not his leg. He turned over on his pillow, biting his lip, and he thought horribly of how he'd acted. Thought of her, and what she'd said, in that sweet voice and it made sense, really, they were different people now, but that didn't really change anything. She kept him sane; she drew a lot, he remembered hazily, she drew a lot and that meant a lot, because that was constant; not that _she'd_ know, fucking flaky bitch.

There was a movement on the bed and he nearly screamed, thinking she was here, listening to his thoughts and his mean words about her, but then he realized it was only the cat, padding cautiously up to him. Roxas didn't even care when it somehow burrowed itself under the covers, rubbing against him, curling against his stomach. Forcing his eyes open, Roxas lifted the blanket to see green eyes peering curiously at him. Roxas blinked, lowered the blanket, started stroking its ears with his hand, heard it start to purr lazily.

He heard Sora and Demyx talking outside, something about what they could do to help, but the purring lulled him to sleep.

__

Thai food wasn't something that Roxas ever really thought he'd get tired of, but he was really tired of sleeping on dirt floors. Call him spoiled or a brat, but he enjoyed beds. And India wasn't exactly the lap of luxury. He was taking a three day shower, and a five day sleep the second he stepped off the plane.

It had taken him a year of working to save, but the trip was worth it. There had been a lot of mountains. Lots of people, infectious diseases, girls throwing themselves at him for four bucks, and a lot of culture. There was art he'd found boring, which made him think of Naminé, and how much she probably would have liked this. They used to talk about this, sometimes, this kind of trip they'd take together. In the end, he was alone, but scaling mountains alone was a lot more uncomplicated. He didn't have to worry too much about leaving something behind.

There were a lot of temples and he appreciated that, their beauty, appreciated the religion, and one time he'd run into a monk who had kind of looked at him funny, like he had something to tell him, but he hid that behind a smile and with a nice little sort of story about an elephant that had walked ten thousand miles to find a watering hole, and then realized that the watering hole at home was just as viable, but needed to be accessed in some other way. Roxas smiled. He had no idea what that meant, but he accepted the blessing anyway.

The plane ride went smoothly, and he got off to see Sora and Demyx and Riku waiting for him. He'd subleased his one bedroom to Sora and Riku while he was off tripping around India; they'd taken care of the cat and now that he was back they were vacating the premises, off to their own place. Demyx wanted to take him out since it had been a few months, but Roxas just wanted to sleep in his own bed. He stepped in alone, and the cat nearly pounced on him when he walked through the door.

Roxas smiled, stroked its ears and spiky fur, took a shower, and got into his own bed. This trip had a way of putting things into perspective. He'd only had to go halfway across the globe to find it. Turning off the light, he let the cat into the bed with him, and it curled up against his stomach, purring like crazy, and Roxas sort of grinned. Well, maybe not halfway across the globe. This was kind of special right here.

__

Sometimes now he'd come home to find the cat waiting for him at the door, almost kind of desperately, and then it follow him around all day, tail up and ears alert. It certainly wasn't a baby anymore; moreover, it certainly shouldn't be so dependent. Roxas liked cats because they did their own thing, didn't slobber all over him, didn't beg for attention. Except for this one. Despite himself, Roxas sort of warmed up to it, sort of relished the attention, sort of relished the weird things that he found out of place when he got home from work.

His black jacket had been on the floor once, all spread out and odd. His boots were dragged out right next to it. Demyx's tattoo magazine that he'd left one time when he'd been excited about getting some weird instrument on his bicep was in the sink. His lucky rabbit's foot, his old black felt cat Halloween decoration, some lucky penny all ended up together in the pantry one day.

Roxas didn't think much of it, after the first few instances. His cat was trying to tell him something, that was all.

__

Sora and Riku had a house with a lot of woods in the back, because Sora liked horses and Riku liked to pretend he was a man who liked to go and chop down trees sometimes. They picked a spot in a little secluded area of the woods, found some shovels, and he and Demyx dug while the other two watched. This, they figured, was symbolic. They'd risen it together, time to end it all together. Johnny Walker concurred with this symbolism.

Roxas had found a little wooden box that he thought was supposed to hold some old school hat, but it was the perfect size. That went into the hole, and then the dirt went over it. There wasn't really any need for a marker, they'd concluded. Roxas wasn't that sentimental. He wasn't some six year old girl. Demyx had wanted it but they'd talked him out of it. His reputation wasn't so great to begin with.

When that was done and the others went inside, Roxas sat on the ground near the newly dug grave, listening to the birds make noises in the branches above his head. He had two fingers of his whiskey left, that he took in a few very smooth swallows. The sky was stuck at some place between twilight and sundown, where everything was kind of hazily red and purple and orange.

He thought of India, and college, and Naminé. Mostly he thought of India, and why he was sad. He shouldn't be this sad. It wasn't like Sora, or Demyx had died. It shouldn't feel this empty inside his chest now. These things happened. A lot.

When the sky had burned out and all that was left was the embers, he got up, threw the empty bottle somewhere into the trees on the right, and looked down at the frayed dirt. There wasn't much left to do. None of them had really said anything. There wasn't much to say.

He surprised himself. Someone should probably say something, even if it didn't make any sense. "You were a good cat, kid. I loved you. Meet you again in the next life, okay?"

For some reason that made him think of elephants in India, and all the things he'd always thought that didn't include the Praise Jesus channel, and then he kind of smiled, fingers unconsciously tightening into some sort of two fingered salute to something he didn't quite remember. He'd remember it next time, though. He was sure of it.

-fin-


End file.
